After our little breakfast expedition to La Cigale in Nantes, E. and I made our way towards la FNAC (a big retailer for entertainment, the one in Nantes is on Place du Commerce) as I wanted to get a few books (a small pile of books is more like it...).To go from Place Graslin to Place du Commerce in Nantes, the nicest way for me is to walk down the beautiful Passage Pommeraye. And the thing about going this way is that you will evidently pass in front of the chocolaterie Maison Larnicol located at one end of the arcade. It is probably a good thing to do so after having eaten a big breakfast like we had just done. Because the temptation to buy a lot of chocolates is all over this pretty chocolaterie.The Breton Georges Larnicol holds the title of Meilleur Ouvrier de France as a chocolatier (he won the title in 1993). He started to sell his chocolates and other sweet treats in Brittany in the 1980's and eventually expanded by opening shops in more than 23 places in France.

His shop in Nantes is really lovely. Walking around the shop front is like visiting a small museum with fantastic chocolate sculptures. And once you step in, it is really hard not to leave without a bag of sweet treats (even if you feel pretty full after the gorgeous breakfast you had!). There is a lot of choice and you do not have to stick to chocolates if you fancy something else. You can also find pretty macarons, caramels, bags of homemade cookies, jars of chocolate spread and caramel sauce, meringues and the now quite famous kouignettes. Georges Larnicol is renowned for his smaller versions of the Breton cake kouign amann which he named les kouignettes. If I tell you this cake mostly consists of a lot of butter and sugar, I am not joking! We did not taste les kouignettes that day but instead got ourselves a little selection of chocolates to bring to my aunt's later that day and share over teas and coffees. They were quite delicious for the short amount of time they lasted (yes, chocolate addiction is possibly something running in my family).For now, I will just let the following pictures speak for themselves as they really show what a chocolate and sweets wonder world this chocolaterie is.

Next on the blog, I will tell you about one more lovely food experience in Nantes and then I will move on to a lovely island in the Vendée region.

In the meantime, you can read about the rest of my little trip to France in those last blog posts:

****************************************************************************************************Chocolaterie Maison Larnicol in Nantes (France) is located at the bottom end of the Passage Pommeraye.****************************************************************************************************

Oh my - that is the one exactly!!! I'm sending this link onto my Mum now, she's so sentimental about our time there! It's the dark, heavily-wooded interior, smiling servers and unforgettable pralines that I remember well.....all joking aside, this series of posts have seriously made think of taking a quick city break over there to show my husband. Nantes tourism should be seeing these!